"Sharp, quirky, and occasionally nettlesome", Walking the Berkshires is my personal blog, an eclectic weaving of human narrative, natural history, and other personal passions with the Berkshire and Litchfield Hills as both its backdrop and point of departure. I am interested in how land and people, past and present manifest in the broader landscape and social fabric of our communities. The opinions I express here are mine alone. Never had ads, never will.

June 05, 2008

Plan B

Our family's conservation efforts for saving "Windrock" screeched to a halt on Tuesday night, with the Wareham Massachusetts Board of Selectmen voting 5-0 not to accept our conservation restriction (easement) and to put it back before Town Voters in the Fall. To say that this is a disappointment would be gross understatement. The Town voters have already voted to release Wareham's designated Community Preservation Act funds to purchase this conservation restriction, and now the Town will almost certainly forgo a Massachusetts Self Help Grant that would have reimbursed 56% of the purchase price.

The Selectmen were upset about the process by which the project was brought forward by the Town Community Preservation Committee and the Wareham Land Trust, rather than the merits of the project itself (though they still had unanswered questions about some of the fine print). In Massachusetts, unlike every other state, Mayors or Selectmen must sign off on a conservation restriction or it cannot go forward. There is no way to override them, even if the merits of a project are beyond dispute and the Commonwealth reviewer is prepared to certify that it meets the test for being in the public interest. For that reason, it is absolutely critical to understand local politics and not to anagonize Selectmen or back them into a corner with external deadlines or incomplete understanding. Tragically, that situation has occurred with our project in Wareham.

Yet we are not, as one email I received yesterday claimed, "dead and buried." You would think, from the amount of post-event email and phone communication we have been engaged with in the last 48 hours, that we were very much still in the race even if we lost the primaries. And unlike the subject of my allusion, you would be right. There are several options, including conservation outcomes, that could develop even with this setback. The obvious one is to work to satisfy the Selectmen's outstanding concerns about the project between now and October's Town Meeting and seek what assurance we can from them that at least a majority of the BoS will support the project if the voters do. Or we could try and restructure the deal with different partners and funding sources. Or we could start carving out and selling house lots (there are 4 Approval Not Required lots possible at the far end of the property). Other possibilities may present themselves. We do not have a great deal of time to sail an altered course, but we do have options.

Conservation transactions are intensely complicated: far more so than straight real estate sales. There are lessons to be learned here, but please forgive me if I decline to air them at this time. The Fat Lady has laryngitis, after all.

Comments

Tim:
Sorry to hear this. "Gumption" is old-fashioned, these days, but it likely runs in your family. Still, little can spill the wind from sails as quickly and completely as suspicion leavened with authority and tempered by ignorance. Good luck--I know you and your family will find a way.

Terry, Onset Beach is just the other side of Great Neck where Windrock lies. And if you sailed out of Marion, you certainly passed in front of the big red house beyond the bluff and the gray erratic perched on the brink that gives the place its name.

Today I went to a meeting in New Bedford to plan a way forward with an even broader array of conservation folks. Learned some things, made some plans. We shall see.

I am sad to hear this. I never knew mayors and 1st selectmen in the Bay State have absolute veto power over such matters. Sounds outrageous ...

I practically feel like I know Windrock after having read your blog for the last couple of years. I often pass thru Wareham on the way to my dad's place in West Dennis.

When I spent the summer of '73 working at a dinner theatre in the village of Buzzards Bay, we used to go to Onset beach, which I believe is in Wareham. Plus I had a friend in Marion who used to take me on boat rides across the bay. Who knows? Maybe we sailed right past Windrock.

May the fat lady sing only after your conservation restriction has been secured.